


A Fun Conversation

by moreagaara



Series: The Emperor Revived [3]
Category: Warhammer 40.000
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Blood, Blood Magic, Blood and Gore, Blood and Violence, Character Death, Cross-Posted on deviantArt, Dark, Death, Emperor Revived, Family, Flashbacks, Gen, Gore, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Literature, Memory Related, Mental Health Issues, Original Character(s), Originally Posted on deviantART, Post-Canon, Posted Elsewhere, Psychological Trauma, Sci-Fi, Science Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Supernatural Elements, Trauma, Violence, War, World War I, fan fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-15
Updated: 2019-04-15
Packaged: 2020-08-12 23:55:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20164732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moreagaara/pseuds/moreagaara
Summary: In which I give the Emperor a backstory!  He does not have one in the canon; he just kind of appeared out of nowhere around the time of the Unification Wars (M28ish = 27 000) and started aggressively trying to make things better.  Once again, this is my AU.  Side note:  the stuff in italics may not have been relayed in full to Roboute Guilliman, Lord Commander of the Imperium and Primarch of the Ultramarines.  Daenus was remembering everything in italics, but he may not have told good old Robby G everything that he was seeing.Things what belong to who:Games Workshop:  the WH40k peeps and settinghoholupercal:  Crawyen Chakamar and Taizy (Taizrothar)me:  the writing and the Emperor's name





	A Fun Conversation

**Author's Note:**

> In which I give the Emperor a backstory! He does not have one in the canon; he just kind of appeared out of nowhere around the time of the Unification Wars (M28ish = 27 000) and started aggressively trying to make things better. Once again, this is my AU. Side note: the stuff in italics may not have been relayed in full to Roboute Guilliman, Lord Commander of the Imperium and Primarch of the Ultramarines. Daenus was remembering everything in italics, but he may not have told good old Robby G everything that he was seeing.
> 
> Things what belong to who:  
Games Workshop: the WH40k peeps and setting  
hoholupercal: Crawyen Chakamar and Taizy (Taizrothar)  
me: the writing and the Emperor's name

_Oh boy, this is going to be a fun conversation, _the Emperor thought to himself on seeing his brother—Primarch, he corrected himself—Guilliman enter the room he had appropriated to be his office. Roboute looked just as shocked to see the Emperor awake as Daenus was to see him. After all, to be perfectly honest, he had assumed that none of the Primarchs had survived the Horus Heresies, let alone made it all the way to the 45th millennium that his Imperium was apparently in now.

“…do you want the good news or the bad news, father?” Roboute asked him.

In answer, the Emperor pulled out a single piece of paper, with instructions written in a language tens of thousands of years forgotten: _bang head here. _“Hit me.”

In the end, Daenus wound up having to follow the instructions ten different times. The Imperium was a complete mess, but Guilliman had been doing his best to sift through the worst of the mess. Even the dating system was effectively broken. Daenus had thought that the dating system would at least survive, but apparently he had overestimated humanity’s capacity to hold to something and underestimated its capacity to royally screw itself.

It did not take long for them to decide that Roboute was doing quite well thus far as the Lord Commander of the Imperium, nor did it take them long to decide that the Emperor was better served going out among the people rather than staying on Terra getting bogged down in administrative details. There were, as Daenus put it, bigger things to worry about than the dailies. Which of course meant that Roboute was to stay put in his position.

More accurately, Daenus agreed, and Roboute was displeased with the idea. “This seems like the Warmaster thing all over again,” he stated baldly. He wasn’t wrong.

“Yeah, that was…that was a really big fuck up on my part. In more ways than one.” Daenus sighed. It was time and past time to come clean about everything he had kept from his Primarchs. “I get the feeling I should start from the beginning,” he started.

“For example, why Horus out of all the Primarchs? Because he saved your life that one time?” Guilliman asked.

“Do you remember mom and dad?” Daenus asked.

“Why would I—” Roboute asked, clearly confused. But then a flash of memory seemed to stir in his mind. It was at times like this Daenus wished he really could read minds; was Roboute seeing their father, a man with red hair and golden eyes so like Daenus’s own? Or perhaps it was their mother, a dark-haired woman with horns and kind red eyes, so similar to Horus’s? Or perhaps it was something else entirely…lessons on how to not die from using blood magic, their first family house in Mesopotamia in one of the first cities. “…what happened? What did you do?” Roboute eventually asked, quietly. Dangerously.

Daenus was glad the door was closed. “You aren’t my son, Roboute.” Blunt was best. It had to be best. “You’re my brother. Our father’s name is Crawyen Chakamar. Our mother’s name is Taizrothar. We were born…some ten thousand years or so before the mythical year zero by the calendar we use now. Around the time mankind first figured out agriculture.”

~~*~~

_Daenus, Horus, and Roboute ran through the desert, laughing as they chased some small creature. The creature bleated and led them through a stream, giving them a chance to cool down in the heat of the day; it could have lost them whenever it wanted, but it was choosing not to. “Fluffy, come back!” Roboute yelled; the creature bleated in response and ran for a tree. It didn’t make it._

_Their neighbor—a man who had always hated their Fluffy, saying it was an abomination against all the gods—swore at them, reminding them he’d always said he was going to shoot it if it ever crossed the borders of his land, and shook his bow at them. Said he’d shoot them too if they didn’t piss off._

_His hand exploded. Daenus didn’t even remember pointing at it. Only that he remembered his father doing something similar to the chief, but immediately after the hand had repaired itself. Their neighbor’s hand wasn’t coming back, though. Horus took advantage of their neighbor’s distraction to run to their Fluffy and hold it, while Roboute screamed for their mother and father._

_Their mother showed up first. Daenus chose to look away from what her presence did to their neighbor, but knew that Roboute did not. “You deserve it! Monster!” Roboute was yelling at him. But Daenus was watching Horus and Fluffy._

_Somehow, Fluffy was healing. Horus had pulled the arrow out of it, and its flesh was mending. It was starting to move again, to whine, to nuzzle Horus’ hand for comfort. Daenus stumbled over to help him; somehow Fluffy was healing faster now Daenus was nearer. Their mother held them both, and their father arrived just as Fluffy was licking their faces, as though nothing bad had happened._

_Even though their faces were still stained with tears, and Roboute was still kicking the remains of their neighbor. Crawyen stopped him, then held him while he cried. Distantly, Daenus heard their mother explain that both Daenus and Horus had used blood magic before she had got there to finish the job. That Daenus had exploded the man’s hand, and Horus had begun healing Fluffy, and drawn power from Daenus to finish it. Roboute hadn’t done anything related to blood magic himself, but likely would have done if Taizy hadn’t arrived when she did._

_“You all have lessons tomorrow. You and all your brothers,” their father told them. And then he took them home._

~~*~~

Daenus explained what it had been like growing up. He explained the lessons in blood magic, and how all of them had achieved some level of skill in the art. He explained how they had eventually split apart as a family, and gone all over the world. Kept in touch, but dying one by one as wars erupted in place after place. The twins had been the first to die, eventually killed by people proclaiming that they were bad luck. How only nine of them had made it past the mythical year zero. How Guilliman had died the first time, trying to stop the encroachment of Old World settlers upon those who already lived in the New World.

How by the time the third millennium, as they now counted time, was just a century away from beginning, only three of them were left: Daenus, Horus, and Sanguinius. Daenus had been staying in the country called England at the time, getting treated for a disease called polio. Horus had been across the ocean, in a country called the United States of America. “And Sanguinius…was near the heart of the entire conflict.”

~~*~~

_The Archduke had been shot. Sanguinius’ best friend was dead. It wasn’t the first time this had happened, but somehow…somehow now it all just felt like too much. Normally he would have been able to move on with his life, but this time he wanted to punish someone for this death. He joined the war as a soldier. As a vampire, he was notoriously hard to kill, and his blood (and the magic contained therein, the magic he couldn’t use without dying himself) saved many of the lives of his comrades. His Austrian comrades. They had been called blessed by God, or perhaps they were angels sent by God to avenge the Archduke and punish Serbia. Sanguinius had laughed at that, and said that if they were angels, they were bloody ones. Daenus had grinned on reading that in the letter Sanguinius had sent; just because they were technically on opposite sides of the war was no reason not to be civil at each other over the lines._

_It was towards the end of the war; America had just entered on the side of the allies, and it was beginning to look as though the three of them might just make it through this war with none of them dying. Daenus had been barred from being a member of the ground forces, even as a medic; his leg did severely limit his mobility, and so he did not protest too much. But even a twisted, crippled leg could be used to push pedals in an airplane, and so Daenus was allowed to be a scout in the new field of aviation._

_Today, he was flying over the trenches near where Sanguinius was supposed to be stationed; Daenus thought for a second he might wave at him with his plane. But then he saw poison gas spreading throughout the trenches. He would have moved on, but no gas simply stopped spreading at a certain point unless someone made it. Especially not mustard gas._

_Sanguinius. “You idiot!” Daenus swore. He made his plane land behind the enemy trenches; he could always say it had been shot down when he got back to friendly lines. Even if right now everyone was too busy dying to shoot at him. “Sanguinius!” he yelled as he donned his own gas mask, sprinting towards the trench._

_Hands tried to grab him for wearing a British uniform. He didn’t care, but he did punch a few people who got in the way a little too much. “Sanguinius!” he screamed again, this time heading straight for the point where the gas stopped spreading. “You damned idiot! You vampiric imbecile!” No one understood him; he always defaulted back to Sumerian when upset. Sanguinius did, though, and laughed through his cough._

_The fool had used a bayonet to rip his arms open, then used blood magic to pull the gas into himself. It would hurt no one else. Daenus tried to grab the same bayonet to rip his own arm open; if Sanguinius got blood in him quickly, he could still live. But Sanguinius grabbed his hand with surprising—if quickly failing—strength. He didn’t speak. He couldn’t; his lungs were too blistered. But he did shake his head. A drop of blood hit Daenus in the eye, enough that he saw a flash of what his brother wanted to say. He had seen his true death ages ago, in the moment that foul pharaoh had made him what he was, and the second the gas had hit, he knew that this was it. He was fated to die this day. He chose to at least try and save his men._

_He died. It was the first time Daenus had been able to hold one of his brothers as he died, rather than hearing about it months or years later, as the information slowly made its way around the world. Daenus meant to stay a while, to mourn his brother. To take him back to his home in Britain, and say anything he could to get his brother a hero’s burial._

_But the hands wouldn’t stop grabbing him. Wouldn’t stop pulling him away from his brother, the only brother he’d seen die, the only brother he’d been able to properly mourn. All the loss, all the pain he’d felt over the twelve thousand years he’d been alive built up in him. His father and mother had vanished not long after they’d all become adults; the steady loss of each of his brothers, until now, when only he and Horus were left. It hurt. He couldn’t hold it in, didn’t want to hold it back._

_He released it in a scream. Everyone within fifty feet of him died instantly, their brains melting out of their ears and noses. The others stumbled backwards, away from the demon that had arisen suddenly within their ranks. Daenus climbed out of the back of the trench, blood dripping from his nose. He had never before used his birthright on this scale. But he was just getting started._

_They had to die. They all had to die. They had killed Sanguinius; their ancestors had killed his brothers, and all for petty reasons. Stupid, unimportant reasons. They raised their guns and fired at him; the bullets connected. But Daenus did not fall. He merely healed the wounds with a thought; he could always dig the lead out later. He screamed again._

_This time their heads exploded. His face and uniform were covered with blood and brain matter from those nearest him. Gods, this felt good._

_More Austrian bastards coming at him from the other nearby trenches. One of his bullet wounds was still leaking. He touched the blood, smiled, and shaped it into armor like the knight he had once been. Only now his armor was red, and no knight had ever fought with claws strapped to the backs of their hands._

_Exploding heads was all very well, but melee combat was far better, far more satisfying. Now he could feel their bodies giving way under his blades. And whenever their blood spurted, hit his armor, it became stronger. More protective. No machine gun was going to stop him, especially not after he formed one spurt of blood into a spear to destroy its operator._

_More._

_He looked across the field, to no-man’s land. It was the British that were on the other side. They had dropped the gas. They were the direct killers of his brother. They should not be spared. They must not be spared. That many machine gun bullets would certainly slow him down…he needed wings._

_He pulled them out of the bodies of those few surviving Austrians who tried to run. Giant, formed of pure, still-flowing blood, he laughed as they sealed themselves to his armor. In the back of his mind, something else laughed too. More blood, more chaos, more skulls for the skull throne. One flap of his wings took him across the field to where his former allies were entrenched, awaiting his report of the enemy forces._

_They’re all dead. Would you like to know how they died? He screamed a third time. This time he wanted it to last, so he aimed for their bellies instead of their brains. Men wailed their pain, their terror, tried to stuff their intestines back where they belonged. It didn’t last. He danced through their ranks, still too stunned to react. He had no need of a helmet anymore, no need of armor. Let them see who they had angered._

_Let them join his brothers in death. Everyone on this miserable ball of mud would do so eventually. The only reason Daenus had been put on it was to hurry them along. He sank into the pleasure of just killing over, and over, and over again. Blood for his new god. Blood for power, blood for strength._

_He barely paused when he realized he had run out of people to kill. He turned and looked back over what he had done. The landscape had already been destroyed by years of war, and now it had two brand-new rivers that carried their burdens of bones and corpses to the great sea his blood-god ruled over. On a lark, he arranged some of the bodies into an eight-pointed star, and rested for a while._

_But then he got up and moved on. The living were in every direction, and so was this war that had claimed his brother’s life. He only had to pick one and start walking. There was no room for mercy now. He didn’t even stop when he found the Americans, and his brother Horus. By that point, he was so fully lost to his rage he recognized only that he had found a suitable opponent._

_An opponent he couldn’t touch, for they moved too fast. Speed for speed, they were matched. Nearly twins in the way they moved, Daenus could not gain the upper hand, no matter how many died around them, providing more blood, more fuel, more weapons with which to strike down this great warrior he faced._

_He tried a scream at last, but this time it was his own throat that filled with blood. It took only a moment to close the injury, but moments mattered. The other warrior had the upper hand for just an instant, and instants mattered. One punch to the eye, and the blood stopped answering him. Tiredness swamped his limbs. When had he last eaten, drank? He collapsed._

_A voice. “I’m afraid I have to go home…my brother needs help.”_

~~*~~

_They’d wound up securing him in a cloth sheet, to keep the ropes from directly touching his skin, where his twisting could potentially rip his own flesh and give him access to blood that he could use to start the killing. A gag served to muffle his enraged yells, such that the worst he could do was give people nosebleeds. Even then, it was usually only Horus, who could easily stop the bleeding with a twist of thought, but even Horus could only fully stop him using his blood magic entirely for a few minutes at a time—enough to stop him cold in a pitched fight, but impossible to keep up continuously._

_Even Horus had trouble getting him on board a ship bound for America; the captain wanted none of this prisoner—dressed in a German uniform pinched from one of the thousands of dead on the fields—who had to be trussed up like a wild animal, whose muffled shouts kept giving nosebleeds to those nearby. Eventually, he agreed so long as Daenus was kept below decks at all times, and all other cells on board were vacated._

_Daenus started to come back to himself midway across the Atlantic, in the middle of Horus telling some story. He didn’t care at first what he was saying. Some story about how Daenus had once saved a town from slaughter. Clearly his younger self had been an idiot; he should have joined the other army to help in the slaughter, and then turned on them. His situation was becoming clear; his hands were secured together with layers upon layers of tightly wrapped cloth, and he was gagged. No help there. His feet weren’t bound to each other, and he could walk, but one leg was still weaker than the other, and there were heavy weights on each foot. He could walk, but it would be slowly. When he tried to get up, he discovered he had further been shackled to the floor; the chains were the weights he had felt, and as they were on the outside of thick leather boots, they wouldn’t be cutting his skin anytime soon._

_He could still see, but he had never been good at using his blood magic through his eyes (and thoughts) alone. No time like the present to get better, though…but first he had to be rid of Horus. And for that, he had to pretend to break at least a little. It took a while, but Horus did start to leave him alone if he sat sullen and quiet, refusing to communicate. He would still come down at regular intervals, usually to feed him, but even then the gag stayed on._

_The ship’s rats were his test subjects. He started deliberately fighting every now and then (never predictably) to create crumbs to lure them to his cell. Sometimes he would let them go without incident; sometimes he would hurt them through his blood magic. But even when he hurt them, he would heal them up so no evidence was left of his practicing. By the time the ship docked in New York, he was good enough at it that he could use his full range of powers just by looking at his target._

_By that point, Horus trusted him enough that he sent five normal crewmen to fetch him up to the deck and Horus, who would take him to his home. Daenus let them get close, let them open his cell door, let them unshackle his feet. Then he looked at one, and released his rage. The man’s eyes exploded, and his throat filled with blood. He couldn’t scream, but the others could._

_They tried to knock him out, but Daenus simply looked at them. One vomited his entire body’s worth of blood onto Daenus—it felt so good to be drenched again—and another exploded limb by limb. The fourth’s brain melted, and the blood from his body was formed into a blood spear, with which the fifth was impaled._

_Some of the blood covering him did well to remove the cloth bindings and gag. He laughed, finally free, and rejoicing once again as he again heard the voice of his blood god. More blood, more skulls—_

_Horus. Damn him. Daenus snarled and gestured; a whip of blood struck him across the face, would have hit his eyes, but Horus twisted away at the last moment. Instead it opened a cheek, which healed. Of course it healed. Daenus tried to explode a hand, a finger, something to quickly end the fight._

_But Horus looked at him, and once again the blood stopped answering. “You weren’t the only one keeping secrets, Daenus,” he said, and hit him in the stomach. The shock was enough to stop Daenus from properly focusing. “I’m sorry,” he said as he turned the blood covering Daenus into more cloth bindings. It wrapped itself around his hands, hobbled his legs, stopped his mouth, and now covered his eyes. White hot rage did not subside for a full week, more than long enough for Daenus to be brought to Horus’ home in upstate New York. A farm, with anyone he could potentially hurt miles away, and even fully enraged, Daenus could not reach more than half of one._

~~*~~

_Once again Daenus collapsed into sullen silence whenever Horus came near. After a while, he stopped eating as well; if he couldn’t punish his brother, he could at least punish himself. He didn’t deserve food; after all, he had failed to stop his other brothers—all his other brothers—from dying, and then he had failed to properly punish humanity as a whole for their role in their deaths. Only Horus wouldn’t give up on him._

_If he wouldn’t eat by himself, Horus would sit with him and distract him long enough to get at least some food in him. If he wouldn’t drink, Horus would make him drink his own blood if necessary. Occasionally he lost fingers, but always grew them back. “You know you can’t hurt me permanently,” he would always say, and always looked so sad._

_In the end, Daenus was the one who broke, turning his magic on himself. If he could neither kill Horus, nor avenge his brothers, he could at least join them. But Horus wouldn’t allow this either; any injury Daenus caused himself was promptly healed, and then Horus would sit with him. A threat, Daenus felt, a reminder that Horus could stop his blood magic at any time, and he would once again be left with no connection to his bloody-handed god._

_What was it with Horus and talking? What mattered were actions. He tried to not listen, but his words were bound to get through sometimes. Inane things. Baseball scores. A new store going up in the nearby town. Maybe if Daenus behaved, could keep himself calm for a whole month, he would take him there. The Olympics being held in Germany next year; some political leader promising a great spectacle. They were going to try and film it this time, and broadcast it to people’s homes. Under no circumstances was Horus taking him anywhere near Germany, but if Daenus was good this week, maybe he could watch them upstairs._

_Giving himself blood cancer was not good behavior. Neither was making his immune cells attack his platelets. That last attempt had left him so sick and weak that Horus let him watch the Olympics anyway. Daenus didn’t really register what was happening; he hurt too much. His fingers especially. They wouldn’t obey him, wouldn’t uncurl, even when he tried to use blood magic to force the issue. Even so, he tried to hide it from Horus, but he found out anyway._

_Daenus hadn’t heard him come in from getting the mail and newspaper. Apparently Horus had heard him crying as he tried to use the coffee table to make his fingers bend, searing pain blinding him to everything else around him. He leaned into Horus when he was held, didn’t care about seeming weak in front of him. Horus could fix everything else, so surely he could fix this._

_In the end, Horus had had to cut his fingers off and remake them so they would bend again. He didn’t say anything when he sliced into the removed fingers to see what was wrong, but whatever it was clearly hadn’t been Daenus’s idea. Although he did admit that claws would have been useful on board the ship coming here._

_When it happened again, Daenus tried to break his fingers to make them bend. Again Horus cut them off, and grew them back. This time Daenus heard a laugh from his blood god…was he the one doing this? Gods were supposed to ask before bestowing gifts…weren’t they?_

_He asked Horus about that, his voice hoarse from disuse and by this point years of mostly animalistic noises. “The gods haven’t given out gifts for millennia,” Horus told him. “There was an incident a few thousand years after we were born…some woman stole gifts from them so she could become a god herself. I think her husband is still fighting her descendants over that one, but I haven’t checked.” After that, he got very close-mouthed, and refused to give Daenus any details about how they were fighting._

_A third time his fingers froze. This time Horus lost patience and, so far as Daenus was concerned, poured fire into his hands. Whatever he had truly done, Daenus didn’t quite care; his fingers could move again, which meant he could play the drums Horus had gotten him for going a whole three months without hurting himself or anything around him. Music had always been more of Lion’s thing…he’d died in the place now called Germany too, come to think of it, just a few centuries before._

_He told Horus when the headaches started. It felt, so it seemed, like the blood god was trying to force horns to grow on him. Horus found more than just the horns, and as he put it, cleaned Daenus’s cells of everything that wasn’t Daenus. He felt better than he had in decades afterwards, but now the blood god’s calling grew louder. He tried to stop, to not listen; he’d proven himself good at that with Horus._

_But when Horus had to leave for a few weeks—something about the government wanting him to help them with something—Daenus promised to stay on his best behavior. He meant to, really meant to. Tried to stick to the schedule Horus had been drilling into him. On Sunday and Wednesday, you go to church. You stay in the back, and you listen to what the nice man at the front says. You think about it, and you apply it to y¬¬ourself. This is the god you want to follow, not whoever the blood god is._

_But the blood god didn’t like that. No longer able to twist Daenus’ body to his own liking, he whispered instead. Daenus shut his eyes and did his best to pay attention. The whispers grew louder. He should teach them how to paint. Should show them how to really pray. For an instant, Daenus wavered. In trying to focus, he bit his tongue and drew blood. It was enough._

_He felt like he blinked, and when he opened his eyes again, the whole of the church was dead, the skulls piled on the altar in grotesque offering. Blood dripped from his face and hair. Distantly he heard screaming. Somehow he had gotten outside. The scene before him, a normal Sunday, with people walking around and going about their business. They looked at him, and he looked back. Then they were dead. He was the one screaming._

_Stop. I don’t want to—stop!_

_But it wasn’t his body at the moment, and the blood god only stopped when the blood god was satisfied. And Horus wasn’t there._

_Horus was a hundred miles south. He had to get there. At least Daenus had control over where they went, if not what they did on the way. Eventually Horus came to face them, Daenus weakly clinging to consciousness as the blood god tried to force him away. Ten thousand, nine hundred, and seventy-seven dead stretched behind Daenus in a bloody road to home._

_“Help me,” Daenus whispered, and lost his grip._

~~*~~

_He woke up in a hospital. Horus was nearby. How much time had passed? How many had he killed while he was out? At least his head was empty of whispers. The room was empty. White, with green curtains. There was no red anywhere. He thought about checking to see if his blood magic would answer him, but shied away. If the god was still there…he had proven already that Daenus wasn’t strong enough to stop him. Better to not test anything. Horus was shouting at someone._

_Lobotomy? What in the hells of either god was that? At least Horus was saying no to it. Apparently it involved cutting something, which would mean everyone in the building, possibly everyone in the town, was in danger. He weakly tugged at his restraints. At least he was restrained. He needed to be._

_“Horus,” he called. More of a croak. Everything hurt. And Horus came, and held his hand. For a while Daenus was quiet, accepting._

_“We can’t stay,” Horus eventually said, quietly and in Sumerian. “They’ll only let you stay in the country if you get a lobotomy. I’ve seen it done to people…they aren’t mentally sick anymore, but they’re dead inside. And in your case, I’m pretty sure…that god of yours…can still take over even if you do get one.”_

_Of course. Twelve thousand dead, including those in the town where they had lived. No one would want someone who could go off like that in their country. Unless they could harness that for war…Daenus shivered. He wanted nothing more to do with any of that._

_“I’ve told them we’re from India. You remember India? You lived there once,” Horus told him, picking up the cadence of a story. Daenus did remember, mostly remembered that it was where Corvus had died. There had been some sort of demon…he closed his eyes and sank into Horus’s story. Let the story keep him safe from his rage, the rage he could already feel starting to bubble at the idea of lobotomies._

_“We should go to the north of India. In the mountains, where there aren’t so many people,” he mumbled, also in Sumerian._

_“That sounds good,” Horus replied. “They’ve given us forty-eight hours to leave…we’ll have to take a plane.”_

_He hadn’t been flying since…then. It would probably be fine as long as he didn’t have to talk to anyone. As long as he wasn’t flying the plane. As long as nothing happened, and Horus stayed nearby._

_Horus used a fake name to get them onto a public flight to India, so no one who had seen the news recently would worry about Daenus losing himself again. Even so, he saw no less than five soldiers join them on the plane, probably with orders to kill Daenus, or try to, if he did lose it. But the flight was uneventful; Horus had picked them seats in the back of the plane, and brought along a soft blanket for Daenus to burrow into and forget the world outside existed for a few hours._

~~*~~

_The journey north into the mountains took them what seemed like forever, since Horus was unwilling to accept rides from people with cars. Daenus mostly allowed him to do all the hard work; it was hard enough to control the whispers that had started again. As much effort as he put into resisting the blood god, he would still lose consciousness from time to time. Any time he was tired, weak, hungry, thirsty, the blood god was waiting. Any slip was exploitable. And there was always next time. He could see the effort wearing on Horus as he steered them further and further away from people. He had brought a radio along, however, and every night would let Daenus listen to the speeches and actions of a man named Gandhi. A man who wanted his country to be free of British rule, and would therefore resist their rule non-violently._

_Daenus hoped he won. Surely if Gandhi could win without using any violence, so could Daenus. Horus started to leave him be for a while, when the jungle changed into mountain and it had been months since Daenus had fully slipped. He always brought back food, where from he wouldn’t say. They stayed in a cave, sheltered from the worst of the elements, where Daenus had as much room as he wanted to move about, and where he would be nice and visible if the worst happened and he did lose the fight._

_By this point, Daenus didn’t feel much like anything, however. There were times where he would just sit in the sunshine for days on end, drinking only when Horus made him, cooperative now. When those periods started to become more frequent, and it took longer and longer for Horus to bring him out of them, they moved up the mountains._

_They passed under a gate, into a complex full of people in brightly colored robes. Robes similar to the ones Horus had gotten for him when his old clothes had given out at last. Daenus was awake and interested enough at this point that he answered when the oldest monk asked him if he wanted to seek enlightenment. He supposed it was something to do._

~~*~~

_It took decades for the whispers to stop entirely. For the blood god to finally leave him alone, after he’d stopped responding. For Daenus to truly wake up from the nightmare he had fallen into upon Sanguinius’ death. Finally awake, he felt more and more disconnected from the place Horus had left him. Horus did come back from time to time, usually to tell him what was happening in the world outside of the Buddhist temple where Daenus now lived._

_The last time he came back, he told Daenus that humanity was finally ready to leave the cradle of Earth and begin colonizing the moon and Mars. Horus intended to help them get there, and there was a mission to lay the foundations for a permanent settlement on Mars. He’d be gone for ten years, round trip. “Maybe if I behave, I can come with you on the next one,” Daenus half-joked. He didn’t really mean to go; he knew he would be fine, without a doubt, even if the trip to Mars did take five years, and he had only just stopped periodically enraging._

_Horus laughed, and said that was in fact his intention, but that Daenus did have a long time—at least twenty years—to think about what he wanted to contribute to the mission, so there wasn’t any rush. Privately Daenus thought he would look into becoming a doctor. It would do him good, he felt, to prove to himself that his blood magic—and his blood generally—could be used to help people and for good, instead of only murder._

_Of course, to do that, he would need to leave the monastery. And as much as he was beginning to dislike it there, he didn’t want to leave and break from the routine that really had brought him home at last. As much as he felt that his eventual success—and the silence in his mind—had been brought on by his own internal strength, rather than in any external thing Horus had provided for him, the routine was comforting._

_Still, he volunteered to fetch things from the town below whenever he could. The sharp difference between monastery life and village life also calmed him. In all likelihood, he thought, he needed both the bright headiness of the village and the slow, calm serenity of the mountains. There was a balance to be struck between the two._

_But on his last trip down to the village, he heard a news broadcast. That by itself was not new; but the contents of this one hit home. The more he listened, the more he realized that he could not bear to go back up the mountain. He wouldn’t lose control; that wasn’t the problem. He would be perfectly in control the entire time. It wouldn’t be anything personal, just that anything that reminded him of Horus wouldn’t be helpful at the moment._

_He sent the donkey home, and stayed in the lowlands. There was a kind herder who needed someone to mind his sick children while he worked; Daenus was more than capable of that. He even half-expected it when Horus came to visit him, and asked why he was at the herder’s house instead of up in the monastery._

_Daenus looked at him. He knew. “Following the path you laid out for me didn’t feel real. The disconnection I felt, both with myself and with reality in general, was stronger whenever I followed your religion too closely. And when I thought about it, I realized that that was because I didn’t feel human when I did that. Giving up the extremes of emotion was as natural as cutting off both my legs.” And not growing them back, he mentally added. “Then I thought about it some more, and I realized that I was the only person who’d pulled me out of the hole I’d fallen into. Yes, Horus showed me the way up, but I was the one who chose to follow that way.” His subtle way of telling the person who stood there that he knew they weren’t Horus, and that Horus wouldn’t be coming back._

_“So instead you’re going to take your chances down here?” Horus-who-was-not asked._

_“Yes. And I’m going to go one step further. I’m going to be a doctor, Master Tamdin.” The master monk dropped his illusion without comment. “And yes, that does mean I’m likely going to be around a lot of blood. But I think it’s important for both of us to remember, especially myself, that blood magic is only a tool, and can be used for healing as well as destruction.”_

_Master Tamdin nodded. “I will respect your decision. Even though, as far as Horus is concerned, you ought to be staying with us until he comes back.”_

_Daenus looked at him sadly. “You don’t know? Horus died. He died last week, when the shuttle he was to pilot to Mars exploded.” Silence passed between them. The last brother he had lost had sent Daenus spiraling into madness so deep, it had taken him a full century and a half to recover. “It was an accident. One of the engines…the program written to control them didn’t account for the thrust they could actually produce. When Horus called for full power, the number fed into the computers was too large for the program to handle. It spiraled out of control, and would have done far worse had it not exploded when it did.” Horus must have hit the self-destruct button. He had to have done; would have done it to save lives, when Daenus would have attempted a landing, perhaps in the ocean, possibly killing more than he saved. And probably crashing anyway._

_“…then I am sorry for taking his shape,” the master monk replied._

_“It’s fine. I guess it had to happen eventually. And sooner or later, I was going to see someone wearing his face, by accident or design.”_

_With that, Tamdin left him._

~~*~~

It was around that point that Daenus realized he’d slipped into the same cadence Horus had always picked up when telling one of his stories. He smiled a little. “After that, I stayed out of human politics. Sure, I kept track of where we sent ships, but mostly I kept to my research facility here under the Himalayas. I did my best to fix diseases, especially genetic diseases, and whenever I succeeded, I would give my research to someone else. Someone who needed the recognition more than I did. Probably I would have kept doing that for the rest of forever, but…” he shrugged. “Slaanesh.”

Roboute clearly had no idea how to react, but just as clearly believed every word his Emperor was saying. Still, the idea that the Emperor himself had fallen to Chaos, and come back was almost too much. And further, the idea that he was himself a clone of someone who had died tens of thousands of years before the Emperor had begun to unite humanity…

How do you take that kind of thing?

“That’s why you were holding back during the Heresy,” he eventually said. “I wondered. You were always so dead set against anything even remotely Chaotic…then Horus turns up, fully gone over to their side, and you fight to disable, not kill. You thought you could do for him what he’d done for you.”

Daenus nodded. “It had been far too long since I’d fought anything that actually posed a threat to me. I forgot how fast we can move when we want to. After he tore off my arm…I kind of had to act fast to stop Chaos from winning. So I burned the Chaos out of him; the only thing left in his body, physically anyway, was Horus himself. The shock was too much…maybe he would have lived if I’d had the luxury of gentleness.”

“And then after that…you wouldn’t have been able to heal yourself, would you?” Guilliman asked. “It would have been one or the other. Heal yourself, or stop Horus.”

“Essentially. I was hoping the Throne would keep me alive long enough that I could recover my strength and heal myself in time. Turned out I was wrong about that. I underestimated how badly hurt I was…if anyone had been a second slower on the uptake, I would have died that day.” Neither of them said it, but they both knew. If the Emperor had fallen, the Imperium would have collapsed, victory or no. “I needed someone else to heal me, and…unfortunately, I never taught any of you about blood magic. To be fair, I was originally planning to do it while you were all growing up here in the palace.”

“Except you reached into the Warp to empower us, and Chaos was able to scatter us to edges of the universe.”

“Close. I reached into the Warp to get your souls back.” Silence. “I didn’t need the Warp to give you superhuman abilities. That’s easy enough to do with genetic manipulation and proper socialization, both of which I could provide. But if I really wanted my brothers back, in body as well as mind…I needed your souls. And all immortal souls eventually wind up in the Warp.”

Roboute sagged a little. “And no one in the Imperium can ever know the truth about all this, can they?”

“Maybe if the Horus Heresy hadn’t happened. Maybe if the past ten thousand years hadn’t happened, and humanity wasn’t so bloody superstitious again. These days? There’s only so much even a god-emperor can do. Even when he is literally a god…”

“…you always said…”

“And at the time it was true. I was just a man. But…well, it’s been thirteen or fifteen thousand years, depending on which timeline you look at, since the Imperial Creed was established. Ten thousand years of outright worship, of people calling me God, of…feeding on the…thousands of souls sacrificed to me every day…” Daenus’s hands shook. “They empowered me. I really am the god they say I am. I don’t have a choice.”  



End file.
